Le Guin's Hainish series begins with the assumption that centuries ago humanoids from the planet Hain ventured through the solar system establishing colonies on various planets including Earth. For mysterious reasons these colonies lose all contact and knowledge of each other until the 21st century when an attempt is made to establish a galactic league. Individual stories in this loosely organized series explore the inherent communication difficulties...

Living in a "perfect" world without social ills, a boy approaches the time when he will receive a life assignment from the Elders, but his selection leads him to a mysterious man known as the Giver, who reveals the dark secrets behind the utopian facade.

Meg Murry and her friends become involved with unearthly strangers and a search for Meg's father, who has disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government.

Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) may be best known as a fantasy writer, but he published widely and successfully in the horror and science fiction fields. One of his major SF creations is the Change War, a series of stories and short novels about rival time-traveling forces locked in a bitter, ages-long struggle for control of the human universe where battles alter history and then change it again until there is no certainty about what might once have happened....

"Why is glass see-through? What makes elastic stretchy? Why does a paperclip bend? Why does any material look and behave the way it does? With clarity and humor, world-leading materials scientist Mark Miodownik answers all the questions you've ever had about your pens, spoons, and razor blades, while also introducing a whole world full of materials you've never even heard of: the diamond five times the size of Earth; concrete cloth that can be molded...

The three laws of Robotics: 1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm 2) A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. With these three, simple directives, Isaac Asimov changed our perception of robots forever when...

The landmark political treatise that refuted the so-called divine right of kings and established the principles of representative government   "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."   With these stirring words, Jean-Jacques Rousseau begins The Social Contract-the first shot in a battle of ideas that would set the stage for the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. In the feverish days of the Enlightenment, Rousseau...

Blast off with "From the Earth to the Moon," a visionary science fiction masterpiece from the iconic Jules Verne. This groundbreaking novel spins an extraordinary tale of the daring Baltimore Gun Club, a post-Civil War society of weapons enthusiasts, who devise an audacious plan to catapult a spaceship to the moon. In the era before actual lunar expeditions, Verne astonishingly predicts technological advancements and the thrill of space exploration,...

When Aldous Huxley's Brave New World first appeared in 1932, it presented in terms of purest fantasy a society bent on self-destruction. Few of its outraged critics anticipated the onset of another world war with its Holocaust and atomic ruin. In 1948, seeing that the probable shape of his anti-utopia had been altered inevitably by the facts of history, Huxley wrote Ape and Essence. In this savage novel, using the form of a film scenario, he transports...

Fearing a violent confrontation between Earthmen and Spacers, Detective Baley and his new partner, a robot made in the image of the victim, investigate the murder of a Spacetown scientist.